


Double Blind

by songlin



Series: Plaintext [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Conspiracy, Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Grimdark, M/M, Mind Palace, Multi, Post-His Last Vow, Post-Season/Series 03, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:32:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere on the sixth floor of Bart's, Mrs. Mary Watson is giving birth to her first child.</p><p>At the same moment, Sherlock Holmes is in Baker Street, cocooned in his dressing gown on the sofa, peeling a second nicotine patch from its backing and slapping it onto his arm.</p><p>He tells himself it isn't sentiment as he turns over and presses his face into the sofa cushions. It isn't.</p><p>
  <i>You don't love him, you don't love him, you don't love him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Blind

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been talking for some time about a casefic of epic length. It’s the Mary fic I refer to sometimes with a pained look, because of how damn long it’s going to take me. It's definitely not going to be anything I post by writing one full chapter, posting, writing another, posting, et cetera. It's too interconnected. I can't post it until I finish at least the first draft of the whole damn thing. That's going to be...a while.
> 
> That being said, I like parts of this first chunk of it so much that I almost posted it as a standalone. But the ending so clearly needs to be as it is and it so clearly leads into more. Still, I wanted to at least show I was working on something, because I am _really hype_ about this project.
> 
> In the end, I decided to post it as the first chapter, which is what it is, after all, and letting it work kind of like a movie trailer. I'll end up editing it some more when this thing really kicks off, but I thought it made a good rough preview.
> 
> So, COMING SOON: DOUBLE BLIND, the first of two works in the Plaintext series. :)

Somewhere on the sixth floor of Bart's, Mrs. Mary Watson is giving birth to her first child.

At the same moment, Sherlock Holmes is in Baker Street, cocooned in his dressing gown on the sofa, peeling a second nicotine patch from its backing and slapping it onto his arm.

It isn't sentiment, he tells himself, turning over and pressing his face into the sofa cushions. It _isn't_.

_You don't love him, you don't love him, you don't love him._

"It's not like the rule of threes," John says from the inside of Sherlock's head.

Sherlock clenches his teeth and clutches at his skull, but it's no use. He's the one who let John in there in the first place.

"Shut up," he says fiercely. "You disgust me."

John snorts a little laugh. "You were singing a different song earlier, after I called you to let you know we were headed to hospital. Down the hall. In your bed. Trying to purge me from your system. That's how you say it, right? Your nice word for 'having a wank and a cry'?"

"Shut up, shut up, _shut up!"_

"The third time is still not the charm. I'm not some kind of—backwards Beeteljuice."

Sherlock whines and pounds the heel of one hand into his forehead.

"What aren't you saying, Sherlock? Not to me, I know what you're not saying to me. But since I'm in your head and all, if there's something I really, truly don't know, it means you haven't so much as thought it. Why is that?"

Sherlock would stop listening if he could, but there's nothing on Earth he knows that could stop his brain from working.

John drums his fingers on the arm of his chair and frowns, contemplating something. "Let's see," he says.

"Let's not," says Sherlock.

John quirks an eyebrow and doesn't stop. "We both know I'm not really sitting here, chatting about your emotions. I'm just the personification of your inner turmoil over your deeply repressed romantic feelings for me." He snorts. "Jesus, you're pitiful. Even in your head you can't go more than a day without using me as your sounding board. Even when you were gone you couldn't let me be. Popping in here twice a day, talking my ear off."

Sherlock curls in around his elbows. He is fully ensconced in his mind palace now. This part of it looks very much like the living room at Baker Street, taken to its ideal. If Sherlock is being honest, this place is not in his "head," in the metaphorical sense. It is in his heart. This is where he keeps John, ready to be fetched for whatever Sherlock needs.

But increasingly, Sherlock is finding the John inside his head a poor imitation of the one outside of it. He finds this to be the case most often when the real one is unavailable.

The unreal thing in the sitting room in his mind is studying Sherlock and tapping his finger against his lip.

"I don't love you," he says.

Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut.

"Not like that, at least. Not like you love me."

"You— _he_ wouldn't," Sherlock snaps. "I am an—I am a poor candidate. Why settle when one can have what—"

"Mary?" John scoffs. "It's different with her, not better. You can't—hey! Hang on!" He narrows his eyes. "Are you—what's the word—deflecting?"

Sherlock says nothing.

"Bastard." It comes out wrong, lacking the affection with which John should be saying it. Would say it. It comes out…cruel. "Anyways. You're not holed up here like a moody teenager because I don't love you. You've been coping with that just fine for years."

Sherlock is trying his damnedest to barricade the doors against the epiphany he can feel barreling towards him, just so he won't have to see John's eyes light up the way they do when he's figured something out on his own and says—

"Oh!"

Sherlock, in his mind, flies up off the sofa. He means to lunge, to silence, to smother. But at the sight of John's face, he freezes. Just now, it is exactly like the real thing's looks when he has seen something that makes him feel right down to his core, so worn and tired and full of pity.

"I love you." That, he says just as he should, with all the pain in the solar system in his voice. "God, how I love you."

Sherlock will die of this.

"But…I've got Mary. I've got the baby, and I—I can't betray them. They deserve better than that."

"I took too long," Sherlock whispers, lost to bitter despair. "I took too long, I said too little—"

"One word," John says softly. "One word, that's all I would have needed."

Sherlock presses his hand tightly to his mouth and muffles a single sob.

John's brow is gouged with sympathy. "This is what you were hiding from. Not unrequited love, but unrequitable." He shakes his head. "Oh, Sherlock."

"Stay with them," Sherlock murmurs. "It's my gift. She's—she will be—better. Both of them."

There is something else he would say. It quivers perilously on his tongue.

But before he can say it, his phone rings from his pocket, yanking him back into reality. Sherlock clears his throat and answers.

"Yes." He touches his face. His fingers come away wet.

"She's dead."

John.

"They're…they're both gone."


End file.
